In carrying out our design, we shall be found in some measure occupying ground already taken up by the Commissioners in Lunacy, and by some able essayists in the Medical Journals. We do not regret this, although it may deprive us somewhat of the merit of originality of conception and elucidation, as it will strengthen our positions and enhance the value of our remarks. Fortunately, too, we coincide generally with the opinions from time to time put forth by the Lunacy Commissioners, to whom so great merit is due for their labours in the interests of the insane, and for the character and position our County Asylums enjoy in the estimation of our own people and of foreign nations.
To attempt the character of a reformer when the affairs of Lunacy and Lunatic Asylums are in such good hands may be deemed somewhat ambitious; yet as sometimes an ordinary looker-on may catch sight of a matter which has eluded the diligent observer, and, as the views and suggestions advanced are the result of mature and independent thought, aided by experience of considerable length, and very varied, the undertaking may, we trust, be received with favour.
At all events, we flatter ourselves that the representation of the state of Lunacy in England and Wales; the estimate of its increase and of the provision made for it; the evils of workhouses as primary or permanent receptacles for the Insane; the ill consequences of large asylums, and some of the legal amendments proposed, are in themselves subjects calculated to enlist the attention of all interested in the general welfare of our lunatic population, and in the administration of the laws and institutions designed whether for its protection or for its care and treatment.
Chap. I. – Of the Number of the Insane
This inquiry must be preliminary to any consideration of the provision made or to be made for the Insane. In carrying it out, we have chiefly to rely upon the annual Reports of the Commissioners in Lunacy along with, so far as pauper lunatics are concerned, those of the Poor-Law Board. However, these reports do not furnish us with complete statistics, and the total number of our insane population can be only approximately ascertained. The Lunacy Commission is principally occupied with those confined in public asylums and hospitals, and in Licensed Houses, and publishes only occasional imperfect returns of patients detained in workhouses or singly in private dwellings. On the other hand, the Poor-Law Board charges itself simply with the enumeration of pauper lunatics supported out of poor-rates, whether in asylums or workhouses, or living with friends or elsewhere. Hence the returns of neither of these public Boards represent the whole case; and hence, too, the chief apparent discrepancies which occur when those returns are compared.
To show this, we may copy the tables presented in Appendix H of the Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy for 1857, p. 81.
This very considerable difference of 2603 patients between the two estimates is mainly due – as reference to the summary (at p. 53) proves – to the omission, on the part of the Lunacy Commissioners, of those resident in workhouses and “with friends, or elsewhere,” reckoned in the Table of the Poor-Law Board. This explanation, however, is only partial, for, after allowing for it, the two estimates are found to diverge very considerably. Thus, on adding the numbers in the categories last named, viz. 5055 + 4107 = 9162, in 1852, – and 6800 + 5497 = 12,297, in 1857 to the total given by the Commissioners in each of those years, viz. to 17,412 and 21,344, respectively, we obtain a total of 26,574 in 1852, and one of 33,641 in 1857; a variation of 5416 in the former, and of 5948 in the latter year, from the results given in the Table presented by the Poor-Law Board. Much of this wide difference is explicable by the Board last mentioned not having reckoned the private patients, who amounted in 1852 to 4430, and in 1857 to 4687. Still, after all attempts to balance the two accounts, there is a difference unaccounted for, of 986 in 1852, and of 1261 in 1857.
No clue is given in the official documents to the cause of this discrepancy, and we are left in doubt which estimate of our lunatic population is the more correct. The excess occurs in the Commissioners’ Returns; for on adding together, in each year in question, the numbers reported by the Poor-Law Board, as detained in County and Borough Asylums and in Licensed Houses, we find that the totals respectively are less than the whole number of paupers as calculated by the Lunacy Commissioners, by the precise difference we have made out, viz. 986 in 1852 and 1261 in 1857. Of the two returns before us, we accept that of the Lunacy Commission, viz. that there were, including those in workhouses, and with friends or elsewhere, 26,574 reported Lunatics in 1852, and 33,641 in 1857; and account for this larger total by the fact that the Poor-Law Board Returns apply only to Unions and omit the lunacy statistics of many single parishes, under local acts, and some rural parishes under ‘Gilbert’s Act,’ – containing in them together above a million and a half people more than are found in unions. Moreover, the Poor-Law Board returns do not include County and Borough Patients. Looking to these facts, the excess of 986 in 1852, and of 1261 in 1857, over and above the totals quoted from the Summary of the Poor-Law Board, is not surprising; indeed, taking the average usually allowed of one lunatic in every 700, the number in one million and a half would be above 2000; that is, more than half as many again as 1261; a result, which would indicate the Commissioners’ total to be within the truth.
We have just used the term ‘reported lunatics,’ for, besides those under certificates and those returned as chargeable to parishes, comprised in the foregoing numbers, there are very many of whom no public board has cognizance. Most such are private patients supported by their own means, disposed singly in the residences of private persons, throughout the length and breadth of the country, and, with few exceptions, without the supervision, in reference to their accommodation and treatment, of any public officer. The Lunacy Commissioners justly deplore this state of things; lament their inability, under existing Acts, to remedy it, and confess that not a tithe of such patients is reported to them, according to the intention of the law (16 & 17 Vict. cap. 96. sect. xvi.). It would appear that less than 200 such cases are known to them; and it would not be an extravagant or unwarrantable estimate to calculate their whole number at about half that of the inmates of Licensed Houses, viz. at 2000. This number would comprise those found lunatic by Inquisition, not enumerated in the Commissioners’ summary, although under the inspection of the “Medical Visitors of Lunatics.” According to the returns moved for by Mr. Tite “of the total number of Lunatics in respect of whom Commissions in Lunacy are now in force,” there were, on the 27th July, 1858, 602 such lunatics, and 295 of them were, according to the Commissioners’ tables, detained in asylums or Licensed Houses, leaving 347 not reckoned upon. In addition to this class of the insane there is an unascertained small number of persons of unsound mind in the horde of vagrant paupers, alluded to occasionally in the Lunacy Commissioners’ Reports.
The number of Criminal Lunatics in asylums is noted in the returns, but that of those in jails is not reckoned. Although this is comparatively small, owing to the usual custom of transferring prisoners, when insane, to asylums, yet, at any one period, a proportion sufficient to figure in a calculation of the whole insane population of the country will always be found. Nay more, besides such scattered instances in County Prisons, there is a very appreciable number in the Government Jails and Reformatories, as appears from the returns presented to Parliament (Reports of the Directors of Convict Prisons, 1858.)
The prisons included in these reports are: – Pentonville, Millbank, Portland, Portsmouth, Dartmoor, Parkhurst, Chatham, Brixton, Fulham Refuge, and Lewes. In the course of 1857, 216 persons of unsound mind were confined, some for a longer or shorter period, others for the whole of the year, in one or other of those prisons. Making allowance for those of the 216 who by removal from one prison to another (a transfer apparently of common occurrence, the rationale of which we should find it difficult to explain), might be reckoned twice, it may be safely stated that at least 150 were in the prison-infirmaries in question the whole year. In fact, the Infirmary of Dartmoor Prison has wards specially appropriated to insane patients, and actually constitutes a criminal asylum of